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Including Falcon Heavy's two side boosters, SpaceX has successfully completed an array of land-based recoveries in the last four months, but not a single landing on a drone ship. (SpaceX) Including Falcon Heavy's two side boosters, SpaceX has successfully completed an array of land-based recoveries in the last four months, but not a single landing on a drone ship. (SpaceX)

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Florida wants to build SpaceX and Blue Origin three extra rocket landing pads

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First reported by Florida Today, economic development agency Space Florida has expressed serious interest in funding the construction of two major space infrastructure projects in Cape Canaveral, a runway for a prospective Boeing spaceplane and a separate landing zone with up to three pads open for vertical rocket landings from companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and others.

SpaceX already operates its duo of rocket landing pads (Landing Zones) designated LZ-1 and LZ-2. Located on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station property, those pads have already supported 11 successful Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket landings, beginning with the company’s first-ever Falcon 9 booster recovery (December 2015) and ending more recently with the jaw-dropping mirrored landings of both Falcon Heavy side boosters after the rocket’s inaugural launch.

The exact operational capacity of those SpaceX-built landing zones is not entirely clear, meaning that it’s difficult to know if or when SpaceX would need access to two or even three additional pads. Built out of high-temperature concrete and serviced by a handful of automated fire control water jets, the only visible wear and tear the pads seem to suffer through is the routine destruction of their radar-reflective paint, intended to help Falcons more easily determine the vertical distance to their landing targets and thus accurately throttle and gimbal the one or three Merlin engines used to land.

 

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It’s entirely possible that that radar-reflective coating is landing-critical, but the fact that just one of SpaceX’s two LZs was painted with it for Falcon Heavy’s dual rocket landings indicates that it’s at most a useful crutch. As such, the only thing lost by repeated and high-frequency landings at LZ-1 and LZ-2 would be a coat of aesthetically pleasing but nonfunctional paint. Over time, it’s likely that maintenance and refurbishment would be necessary, but the pads currently do not require any critical refurbishment to the landing areas themselves between Falcon landings.

As such, the only conceivable instance where SpaceX would obviously need three or even four rocket landing pads would be multiple lightweight Falcon Heavy launches just days apart or a Falcon Heavy launch followed within a few days by a light Falcon 9 launch. A need for that capability is almost certainly a year or more away, as 2019 is shaping up to be a slow period for space launch compared to recent years.

 

SpaceX’s next land-based rocket landing may actually occur on the West Coast, marking the debut of the company’s first Californian rocket landing zone after the late-September launch of the Argentinian SAOCOM-1A Earth observation satellite.

Space Florida is an official wing of the Florida state government tasked specifically with shepherding the region’s truly unique space industry and spaceflight infrastructure with an annual budget averaging between $10 and 20 million. More importantly, the agency has direct access to Florida legislators, allowing it to have some level of access to the entire state’s borrowing powers for the purpose of petitioning for and securing invaluable loans for companies involved in Florida’s space economy or considering joining in.


For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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SpaceX just launched its secret Starfall saucer again

SpaceX launched its Starfall capsule again on Bandwagon-5, this time listed openly beside rideshare customers.

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An artist’s illustration of a SpaceX Starfall capsule reentering Earth’s atmosphere. (Image: SpaceX)
An artist’s illustration of a SpaceX Starfall capsule reentering Earth’s atmosphere. (Image: SpaceX)

SpaceX launched its Starfall reentry capsule for the second time on Tuesday morning, flying it as the payload of the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission. Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida at 7:04 a.m. ET with 32 payloads, and the first stage booster, on its 19th flight, landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas about nine minutes later.

Starfall was scheduled to separate last, 2 hours and 48 minutes after liftoff. The final customer satellite on SpaceX’s mission timeline comes off the upper stage about an hour and nine minutes in, which left a long gap before the capsule was due to be released alone. SpaceX later posted that the payload deployment sequence is complete. At liftoff, the company said Starfall “enables affordable, routine access to a microgravity environment, providing unique opportunities for on-orbit manufacturing, scientific research, and testing.”

As Teslarati reported before the first Starfall flight, SpaceX made no public announcement about the vehicle then, and nearly everything known came from FAA and FCC filings. This time Starfall is an item name on the official mission page, listed beside paying rideshare customers. SpaceX has still not said what, if anything, is aboard this Starfall, Spaceflight Now noted.

The FAA’s environmental assessment from May describes a disk about 10.2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall that weighs roughly 4,600 pounds and can bring 2,200 pounds of payload back to Earth.

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Interestingly, the same rocket also carries a competitor’s hardware. Varda Space Industries launched its W-Series 7 capsule on Bandwagon-5, a spacecraft about three times smaller than Starfall that will test whether microgravity can improve the solubility of a cancer drug called Protac. It is Varda’s ninth reentry capsule, and W-8 and W-9 launched earlier this month on Transporter-18. SpaceX has been Varda’s launch provider since the company’s first Falcon 9 rideshare contract in 2021.

SpaceX has not published where or how this Starfall will come down. The preview we ran in June described a recovery from the Pacific Ocean, and the company has not said whether this flight follows the same plan. The launch also arrives hours before SpaceX posts its third quarter results after the market closes, a report we previewed earlier this week.

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The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”

The Boring Company has modified a Tesla powered tunnel truck to carry freight containers underground.

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The Boring Company has found a second job for the Tesla hardware it already runs underground. In a post on X, Elon Musk’s tunneling company showed its latest Prufrock Liner Truck modified to carry a standard 20 foot shipping container. “Using TBC tunnels to transport freight,” the company wrote. “The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20′ shipping container. Fits like a glove!”

The photo shows a red container sitting on a long, low white chassis parked outside, with drive hardware visible at one end. The Boring Company did not say where or when freight hauling would start, which customers it has in mind, or how many trucks it is converting.

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Until now, the liner trucks have hauled concrete. Teslarati reported in August on Liner Truck 3, which uses Model 3 battery packs and drive units to move more than 22,000 pounds of precast tunnel segments to the boring machine. It has 28 miles of range, tops out at 12 mph, and is piloted remotely from the company’s operations center in Texas. The freight version appears to be the same platform with a different bed, and The Boring Company has not said whether it will also be remotely piloted.

Freight has been on the company’s menu for years. When TBC updated its product lineup in 2021, its freight tunnel was described as sized to fit a standard shipping container, “barely.” The company later used the idea at Tesla’s own factory, where Prufrock 3 dug a tunnel to Giga Texas that now moves finished Cybertrucks away from the production line.

The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D in September at a $23 billion valuation, and Teslarati has covered how that money is tied to a UAE tunneling push and a faster Nashville build. In Nashville, Prufrock MB1 and MB2 are mining at the same time, and a third machine is expected to launch in late October. Each machine needs a steady supply of liner trucks, so any design that works for segments and containers alike gives the company more use out of the same Tesla parts.

The Vegas Loop remains the only Boring Company system open to the public, and it moves passengers in Tesla vehicles. A freight service would be a separate product, and the post gave no indication that one is close to launch. For now, it is a truck, a container and a short caption saying they fit together.

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Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”

SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.

It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.

Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.

Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:

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There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.

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